


Under This Gold

by queeniegalore



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Aftercare, BDSM, DS, Established Relationship, Fluff, Humiliation (Light), M/M, Rope Bondage, Tenderness, boot kink (light), degradation (light)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:48:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29801790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queeniegalore/pseuds/queeniegalore
Summary: “Hey, shh.” Bull pressed a firm palm over his mouth, digging his fingers a little into his cheeks. “Yeah, I like that I can make the Lion of Honnleath go all quiet and sweet for me."Bull and Cullen and a quiet afternoon in Skyhold. Peace might mean something a little different for the two of them, but they'll carve it out where they can.
Relationships: The Iron Bull/Cullen Rutherford
Comments: 11
Kudos: 54





	Under This Gold

**Author's Note:**

> I saw [ this insanely beautiful piece of art](https://twitter.com/sicsempervirens/status/1365006440205676544?s=20) the other day and could not stop until I had written a fic about it. This is entirely inspired by that one image, and sempervirens is an ANGEL for letting me go with that inspiration!

Every rope was tied with precision and care, which made the contrast of the cold, gritty floor under his cheek all the more stark. Bull did nothing by accident. If he’d wanted to sweep his floor first, throw down a rug, a pillow, he would have. Every tiny stone, grain of dirt or sand, was intended.

Cullen, his blood a slow, hot ocean crashing through his veins, endured.

“These are cute.” Bull crouched down at Cullen’s hips and slipped a claw under the edge of his braies, already dampening with sweat and clinging stickily to Cullen’s thighs. “Couldn’t bear to take ‘em off. You look _cute_ , Cullen.”

Cullen twitched with an almost visceral flash of indignation, and stilled again. The ropes held him, looped around his chest and arms in a series of knots that looked deceptively simple, but had taken Bull long minutes to create. Wrists bound at the small of his back and anchored to the ceiling, calves bound tightly to the backs of his thighs and similarly anchored to the ceiling, leaving him splayed open, half on his side, face pressed to the grimy floor and knees akimbo with one leg on the ground and one hoisted into the air. It was a singularly vulnerable position - the uncertainty of being partially suspended mixed with the humiliation of being left in a heap on the dirty floor. Cullen had been tight with arousal since Bull tied the first knot.

And now, Bull was like a forge behind him, heat radiating from his body, every brush of his fingers a brand on Cullen’s sensitised skin. Goosebumps trailed up Cullen’s arms and the insides of his thighs, radiating out from Bull’s touch. His mouth opened on a soft sigh. He was exactly where Bull wanted him, there on the floor. There was...peace, of a sort, in that.

“I like how quiet you get,” Bull murmured at his back. “Heard you ripping into a bunch of chevaliers today. Got my dick hard, watching you reduce them to a bunch of whimpering recruits, begging for your favour. Got my dick hard watching you spar with Barris to show ‘em how it's done in Ferelden.” Bull chuckled. “Something about you farm-bred Fereldan boys just gets me going, I guess.”

“Bull.”

“Hey, shh.” Bull pressed a firm palm over his mouth, digging his fingers a little into his cheeks. “Yeah, I like that I can make the Lion of Honnleath go all quiet and sweet for me. Imagine if those Orlesian assholes could see you now, huh?”

Cullen closed his eyes. It had felt good to reduce them, knock them off the pedestal of their own arrogance. Just as it felt good now, to _be_ reduced. Helpless, pressed into the dirt, shushed like a child. Cock hard in his smalls, defenceless and exposed.

“Mmm. I’m not gonna gag you, because I like hearing you beg,” Bull mused. “But I don’t think you need to see, right? Nah, don’t open your eyes. You won’t be needing them for a little while.” He didn’t get up, must have had the blindfold ready. Everything planned, always, with Bull. He wrapped the soft scarf around Cullen’s head twice and knotted it tightly with quick, deft movements, lifting Cullen’s head where needed and laying it back down. Cullen kept his eyes closed and felt the darkness pressing against his lids, opened his mouth again instead. Just to breathe, and taste the cool air on his tongue.

“Good,” Bull said softly, stroking his cheek under the blindfold. “That’s so good, Cullen. Just you stay right there for a little while, yeah? That’s what I want.”

_That’s what I want._

There was strain in his shoulders and his hips. The knots tugged at him, made him conscious of things like the way his chest expanded on every breath, the way his nipples were hard, constantly scraping against the ropes as he moved. The muscles in his thighs felt hot and stretched, his groin a deep, sweet ache. All deliberate. Nothing was happening to him that Bull did not want to happen.

Cullen’s body had been at the cruel mercy of lyrium withdrawal for what felt like an age. It was a relief to hand over the control of it to a kinder master.

Bull stood, with a last lingering touch to his jaw, a claw tip dragged gently over his open lips, leaving Cullen in his half-suspended position on the floor, colder now, without Bull’s warmth behind him. He heard the crunch of Bull’s boots as he did a slow circuit of the room, walking around Cullen like Cullen was a horse he was considering buying. Cullen couldn’t stop shivering. His right hand jerked hard in its bonds - almost unconsciously he’d tried to raise it to the back of his neck. That fucking tell of his, impossible to suppress even trussed up as he was.

Bull let out a low, warm laugh.

“You look _so_ good like this, Cullen. Trying for me.” Footsteps over to the table in the corner of the room and then back. Cullen’s ears were twitching, all of his other senses heightened by the lack of his sight, a feeling he understood from night patrols in the cities, from long marches in the dark overland. He could smell Bull, above the dust and dirt of the room. Smell the heat and sweat and musk of him, smell the steel and leather and dark body odour that wasn’t like that of a human, that Cullen found - in a deep place inside of him - pleasant, exciting.

Bull crouched back down, behind his head this time. There was no time to react before huge fingers were in his hair, tangling his curls into a fist and tugging, forcing Cullen’s head back and exacerbating the strain in his shoulders and now his neck. He let out a moan before he could stop himself, choking on it as it escaped his mouth, and Bull was already shushing him again, soothing even as the iron grip on his hair refused to let up.

“Open up for me, Cullen,” Bull commanded, softly. “See, I like this. Throat bare, legs apart. I could do anything to you, like this.”

Yes, Cullen thought, deliriously, and then bravely out loud, “ _Yes_.”

“Yeah? See, I'd like to know some of the things _you’d_ like me to do to you.” 

Cullen found himself grateful for the blindfold then, so Bull couldn’t see him squeeze his eyes shut and shy away. He wasn’t...skilled at expressing his desires, even now, wasn’t able to produce the easy, appealing filth that Bull was so practiced at. He loved hearing it, Bull’s dirty talk, but when Bull coaxed it out of Cullen it always sounded stilted and odd to his own ears. 

“Ah, Cullen” Bull sighed in amusement. “You wanna tell me but you can’t, right? Can’t bring yourself to say how desperate you are to get _fucked_?”

Cullen couldn’t even nod, Bull’s grip in his hair too unforgiving, could only slump in his ropes, allow his body to become as lax and open and inviting as it could, allow the sudden, harsh intrusion of Bull’s free hand into his slack mouth. Thick fingers probing, pushing at his tongue and the inside of his cheek rudely, a casual display of ownership. Cullen allowed it because he had no other choice, and he allowed it because Bull was right, and he was desperately, desperately wanting. 

Bull held him.

Two points of contact only, one hand in his hair and the fingers of the other in his mouth, but Bull held him all the same, in his ropes, and his regard, and his will. Cullen wanted to drift away in the feeling, surrounded by the warmth and smell of him. The _taste_. Bull captured even his tongue, holding it in a tight grip between forefinger and thumb, and Cullen’s mouth was filled with the salt and mineral of Bull’s skin, triggering a rush of saliva. He didn’t feel shame about the drool that threatened to slide from the corner of his mouth and down his chin, though shame was an ever-present possibility. _Everything as Bull wanted_. 

Outside, the bell rang that signalled the afternoon change of guard, drifting into the room through the din of the tavern, and Cullen would have ignored it except that Bull let out a soft huff. 

“Oh,” said Bull. “Is that the time?”

He stood, letting go of Cullen with a rough scrub of his hand through his curls, and walked across the room in the direction of the window.

Cullen lay in his ropes and waited, heart pounding in his throat, sending blood rushing to all the places on his body where his skin was thinnest, his chest, the tops of his cheeks, his lips. The insides of his thighs.

“It’s just,” Bull continued. “That I’m playing chess with Dorian soon. You know how much that ‘Vint hates being kept waiting.”

Cullen wondered if Bull could see his heart beating. He thought he could. Thought he could probably smell the way his blood was heating as well, the sweat that was springing up on his brow and under his arms, the liquid leaking from his cock.

He licked his lips. “You’re leaving me here?”

The thought terrified and excited him. He imagined it, being left tangled in Bull’s knots while Bull sauntered down to the gardens to drink and chat with Dorian, beat him at chess while Dorian idly enquired where the Commander might be, no one had seen him all afternoon, people would _talk_ … Cullen gulped and licked his lips again, acutely aware that Bull was watching his every reaction.

“You kinda like that idea, don’t you,” said Bull. “And you kinda hate it, too.”

“That’s not unusual, with us,” Cullen whispered, and allowed a small smile when Bull laughed, deep and warm.

“You love it,” Bull said confidently, stepping closer from the opposite angle, now, moving in between Cullen’s splayed knees. From his position on the floor, Bull’s voice seemed to be coming from very, very far away, and Cullen twisted his head, trying to re-orientate himself towards it. He could picture it, the scene they must make. Cullen bound, flushed and trembling on the floor in nothing but his smalls, Bull, fully clothed, standing above him casual as a lord and tall as a mountain.

“Please,” he said, and Bull let out a low, rich hum of approval.

“Mmm, yeah, that’s why I don’t gag you, Cullen. Please what? Please leave you? Please _don’t_ leave you? Please let you come?”

“Please - _yes-_ ” Cullen didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. He was terrified at the prospect of Bull walking away from him, but his cock was still hard. He was terrified at the prospect of not being allowed to come, of Bull hurriedly untying him to go and meet his appointment with Dorian. He thought of Dorian lounging at the chess set drinking wine and waiting while Bull played with Cullen and that image sent fresh shivers through his body. “Just _please_ , Bull, I beg you.”

“Okay, Cullen,” Bull soothed and then there was a hard, flat pressure between his legs, pressing implacable against his cock. The sole of Bull’s boot, Cullen realised and twitched up against it instinctively. Sweet _Maker_.

“You wanna come so bad, I guess we can keep the ‘Vint waiting for five minutes.” The pressure increased, and Cullen arched up as best he could in his bonds, writhing on the cold floor, heated skin scraping against the grime. “That’s it, you want it, you better take it. Rub that cock until it comes for me, Cullen. You can do it.”

Oh Andraste forgive him, it was filthy and it was _perfect_. He twisted his hips, trying to find the right angle, struggling to find a rhythm that would give him what he needed. It hurt, the scratch of the stone floor, the stretch in his muscles, the unforgiving hardness of Bull’s boot. It hurt and he loved it for hurting, loved that this felt _earned_ , like something he had to strive for and win. Five minutes, Bull had said, and Cullen didn’t know if he would make it but oh, he was trying. Humping against Bull’s boot like a hound, panting like one too, with his mouth hanging open, perspiration dampening his hair. 

“Please,” he chanted, over and over. “Please, please, Bull…” Whenever he found something approaching a rhythm Bull shifted, changing the angle of his foot, pressing now against the sensitive head of Cullen’s cock, now, dangerously, against the tender swell of his balls. Cullen’s braies were soaked through, it must look like he’d wet himself or come already, but it was just the stickiness of his arousal mixing with the sweat that poured from him, making the soft linen cling and rub. It was _torture_.

“Hey, it’s yours,” Bull was saying. “Shit, look at you. I knew you were desperate, but _this…_ ” He pushed harder for a moment, and Cullen threw his head back in a silent scream, the pump of his hips refusing to falter through the pain. The hurt didn’t outweigh the pleasure, not yet, Bull knew how to walk that line with him. 

“Maker,” he cried. His muscles bunched and tensed, he could feel the places where the ropes were rubbing him raw, where the stones under him would leave bruises - the wings of his shoulder blades, the point of his left hip. He hurt all over, a new, delicious pain that Bull was mixing with pleasure and painting over the bone deep aches of his withdrawals. 

And he was going to come.

“You close, Cullen?” Bull asked knowingly. “You gonna come from my boot on your cock?” And Cullen could hear it, now, the breathless quality in the voice, the rhythmic slap that meant Bull was pleasuring himself, standing over Cullen like that. It sent lightning through his bones, the evidence of Bull’s arousal heightening his own and he cursed the blindfold now, because he wanted to _see_. Bull _liked_ this, liked it just as much as Cullen did, blindingly, impossibly. 

It was a heady feeling, giving up his power, his station, all his responsibility, just to reduce a man like the Iron Bull. Even as _he_ was reduced. 

“If you’re not close, you’d better be,” Bull’s voice was harsh with exertion, jerking himself quick and hard as he bore down. “Because I’m about to take my foot away and walk down to the gardens and leave you right here until I-”

“ _Wait!_ ”

And there, _there_ , he found the angle, found the rhythm, found the perfect, knife edge balance of ecstasy and agony, and he was so close, he was _inches_ away when Bull leaned in, pressing hard against the entire length of Cullen’s cock. “ _Now_ , Cullen, before I get bored.”

Oh, Maker, but Cullen was well trained to obey, and Bull hadn’t finished speaking before Cullen was screaming again, body hard and still as stone as his cock pumped wave after wave of come into his smalls, as he lay in ropes on the dirty floor at Bull’s feet, at his mercy, at his pleasure. His seed would be soaking through the linen and dirtying the leather of Bull’s boot, he thought with hazy satisfaction, and the image set his whole body twitching. Drawing his orgasm out into deep aftershocks that raced through his muscles, down his spine, zinging along his nerves. 

“Maker,” he groaned, and slumped in his bonds, mouth open wide against the floor. It felt like his cock was still dribbling, the come neverending, all consuming. “Oh, _Bull..._ ”

“Yeah, fuck yes, _Cullen_.”

And _oh_ , that ragged pleasure in Bull’s voice, the deep, broken grunt followed by the hot rain of his seed, splattering down on Cullen’s stomach and thighs to mix with the dirt and grime and sweat and leave him truly, gloriously, _filthy_. 

Through the slow ebb of his receding orgasm there was a thump as Bull dropped down beside him - Cullen winced for his poor knee - and gathered him close. Bull kissed him deeply and with abandon, burning hot mouth rough and wet, and Cullen responded as well as he could, still dazed, mostly just let his mouth be taken, let Bull suck on his tongue and scrape sharp teeth over his swollen, sensitive lips. “Kadan,” Bull whispered, pressing the word into the kiss. “Kadan.”

“Don’t leave,” Cullen whispered back, a wave of vulnerability filling all the spaces left by his arousal. “Please.”

Bull laughed gently, both hands stroking Cullen’s face, carding back through his wet hair. “I’m not going anywhere, kadan. I’m staying right here with you.” Another kiss, and then another, and then, regretfully, a soft sigh.

“Let’s get you out of these ropes.”

Ahh. Cullen supposed, if they must.

Later, much later, they reclined together on Bull’s huge, soft mattress, tangled in sheets that kept sticking to the salve Bull had diligently applied to what felt like half of Cullen’s blasted body. Bull was as meticulous about what came after sex as he was about the rest of it, and Cullen had drunk water and been wiped down and dried off, and had submitted to the salve with only minimal grumbling. And now, clean and sated, they could lie together in the peace of the late afternoon, listening to the sounds floating in from the tavern and the courtyard beyond.

“I don’t know why I like that,” Cullen said eventually, without heat or rancour. Bull had been gentle when he wiped Cullen’s face of the grit from the floor, and it had made Cullen blush.

“But you do,” Bull said, and shrugged, a great, complicated shifting and rearranging of muscles that tossed Cullen’s upper body around like he was caught in a sudden earthquake. Cullen swatted at his shoulder lightly, and settled back down.

Humiliation, degradation, pain...and after, the _tenderness_ , the part that was, at times, the hardest to accept. It would almost be funny, if it wasn't so bewildering. Bull, though, Bull acted like it was natural.

“You like it too.”

“Yeah.” Bull’s voice was easy and slow. “Like a lot of things about you, Commander.”

Cullen basked in the sweetness of that for a few precious moments, tender and awkward, pressed against the warmth of Bull and all that meant.

Presently, a thought occurred. 

“Wait, do you really have plans with Dorian?” he asked suddenly, rolling over and digging his chin into the meat of Bull’s shoulder, regarding the side of his face. 

Bull smiled up at the ceiling. “Oh, you liked _that_. Yeah I do, but not until after the dinner bell. There’s some new researcher from Nevarra and I don’t know if Dorian wants to fuck him or set him on fire, but either way you can’t drag him out of the library until evening, these days.”

Cullen dug harder, until Bull squirmed, and then dropped his face, pressing his forehead gently to the bulk of Bull’s bicep. “ _Would_ you ever? Leave me?”

Bull only drew out the silence for a moment or two, not long enough for Cullen to shy away, but long enough for him to think about it. “I mean not like _that_ ,” he said eventually, in his low, slow drawl. “But yeah, kadan, we could get you in an easier tie, truss you up all comfortable for an hour or so while I go find time for the ‘Vint.”

Cullen bit his lip and let out a soft, soft sigh against Bull’s skin. Maker, why did that excite him _so_ much?

Bull was chuckling, a bass rumble that spread into Cullen’s muscles, his lungs, took over his heartbeat. “Don’t think about it too hard, Cullen. Get some rest before you disappear back out there to keep yelling at people all night, yeah? I’ll be here. Right now, I’m not going anywhere.”

Telling Cullen not to think was like ordering a stream not to flow, but he nodded and kissed the warm skin in front of his mouth, a concession. He was remembering the dirt on his face, and remembering the way it was sweetly, thoroughly cleaned away.

Nothing without purpose.

Tucked up against Bull’s side, still raw from Bull’s ropes, Cullen let himself doze.


End file.
